HAVANA - At this point in my life I have learned there is no value more
important to man than freedom of thought and self expression. Without it
the human status is reduced to a minimum, very close to an inferior
scale.

Such a conviction has driven me to defend that freedom, which my
condition as a writer requires as the sine qua non of the profession.
The Cuban government, by virtue of closing with one law the possibility
of realizing myself in such a fundamental sense, is incarcerating me,
even as, by a judicial miracle, they allow me to move around the country
as an apparently free man (which, by the way, is also prohibited by this
law).

But, once again, the "to be or not to be" choice of the Shakespearean
character of Hamlet troubles my spirit. Like Hamlet, once more, I choose
to be.